Happy Mothers’ Day!!

From Washington, DC,

• The House of Representatives and the Senate are in session this week for floor voting and Committee business.

• Roll Call informs us,
  • “Six months after the launch of the Biden administration’s “birthing friendly” designation for hospitals, advocates are questioning the next steps for the tool aimed at incentivizing better care for patients. 
  • “Beginning last fall, hospitals that achieved the designation received an icon on Care Compare, a federal website aimed at helping consumers pick health care providers. 
  • “But it’s not difficult for hospitals to receive the designation, with 2,225 — that is, most eligible hospitals — having received it as of April. 
  • “Of the nearly 1,000 acute care hospitals that didn’t get the designation, more than 800 said they didn’t provide delivery or labor care. 
  • “And only 135 didn’t get the designation because they didn’t meet the requirements of participating in a statewide or national perinatal quality improvement collaborative program.”  

From the public health and medical research front,

• STAT News reports,
  • “Rick Slayman, the first man to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically engineered pig, has died, according to a statement from his family and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he underwent the historic operation in March.
  • “Our family is deeply saddened about the sudden passing of our beloved Rick but take great comfort knowing he inspired so many,” his family said in the statement released Saturday evening.
  • “The hospital did not say how or when Slayman died. A spokesperson declined to provide further information, citing “privacy issues.”
  • “We have no indication that [Slayman’s death] was the result of his recent transplant,” Mass. General said in the statement. * * *
  • “Slayman’s family also thanked his team of doctors, “who truly did everything they could to help give Rick a second chance.”
  • “Their enormous efforts leading the xenotransplant gave our family seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories made during that time will remain in our minds and hearts,” they said.”
  • RIP and thanks for your courage, Mr. Slayman.

• The Washington Post lets us know,
  • “A recent analysis found poor survival rates after bone fractures in older adults, with fewer than a third of men and half of women surviving five years after a fracture.
  • “Published in JBMR Plus, the study looked at a cohort of 98,474 Ontario residents age 66 and older who suffered fractures to parts of the body associated with osteoporosis between January 2011 and March 2015. The patients were grouped into sets based on the fracture site and matched to patients with a similar demographic profile but no bone breaks during the study period.
  • “The fracture cohort was mostly female (73 percent), and the median age at fracture was 80. In the year before the fracture, up to 45 percent of the women and 14 percent of the men had been treated for osteoporosis.
  • “The analysis revealed that those within a year of a hip, vertebral or proximal non-hip, non-vertebral fracture were at the highest risk of death. The survival probability was lower for the oldest patients.”

• STAT News tells us,
  • “An ambitious effort to cure HIV with CRISPR genome editing fell short in an early clinical trial, investigators announced Friday morning.
  • “In the study, run by Excision BioTherapeutics, researchers tried to use the gene editing tool to address a chief reason HIV has been so hard to cure. While antiviral drugs can clear patients of replicating virus, HIV is able to worm its way into a patients’ own DNA in certain cells. If the patient ever stops taking medicines, those cells start pumping out HIV particles and the infection roars back.
  • “Researchers hoped they could send CRISPR to those cells and, by cutting the HIV DNA lurking there at two spots, slice out the virus. In the Phase 1 trial, investigators administered the treatment to five patients. They then took three of them off conventional antiviral treatment.
  • “In all three patients, the virus soon rebounded and they needed to resume antiviral therapy.
  • “Their approach did not work,” said Fyodor Urnov, director of technology and translation at the Innovative Genomics Institute.”

• Fortune Well explains,
  • Parenting brings many joys, but sleep deprivation is not one of them. So, it’s no wonder that moms and dads are willing to take some drastic measures—in the form of sleep medications—when it comes to getting their kids down for the night.
  • New survey results from Sleep Doctor reveal that 79% of parents have given their child a substance to get them to sleep—with 66% using melatonin, 35% using Benadryl, and 20% turning to prescription sleep aids. Others reported using everything from herbal and over-the-counter aids to CBD, THC, and even alcohol. * * *
  • “Parents are desperate, they’re tired, they’re juggling so many things … and a child having difficulty sleeping just piles onto that,” says Dr. Nilong Vyas, pediatrician, public health specialist, and board-certified sleep expert working closely with Sleep Doctor, which conducted the survey of 1,201 parents in April. * * *
  • “Still, Vyas tells Fortune, “Ideally it’s better to change [bedtime] behaviors and modify them so a child can learn to fall asleep independently, without the need of supplements.”

• The Wall Street Journal considers how helpful are mental health chatbots.
  • “Interest in mental-health chatbots is rising, fueled by advances in AI’s ability to conduct sophisticated conversations. But how much therapy can they really provide?
  • “Chatbots are still no substitute for a human therapist, researchers say. Not only do some of these tools have trouble helping patients in crisis, they don’t always offer a sufficient level of personalization or provide advice that is guaranteed to be accurate.
  • “Yet researchers are homing in on some of the supporting roles that chatbots and artificial intelligence could play in mental-health care. For instance, chatbots are showing promise in helping people determine whether they need care and connecting them to the proper resources, in lifting people’s moods and in practicing skills taught in cognitive-behavioral therapy. 
  • “There’s an enormous need for innovation in mental-health care,” says Olga Troyanskaya, a computer-science professor and AI expert at Princeton University, who leads Princeton Precision Health, an interdisciplinary initiative that aims to use technology to improve healthcare. At the same time, she says, it’s also important to balance enthusiasm with caution, especially when it comes to using artificial intelligence in mental health.”

• The Journal also offers general advice on how to talk with a chatbot.